Adelaide Festivals Visual Art Programme 2025

Politics and performance are at the international heart of Adelaide Festival’s visual art programme this year, spread over a series of five exhibitions. The Adelaide Fringe meanwhile, features more than sixty exhibitions and events covering an array of forms and themes. 

At the Festival, the tellingly named Radical Textiles (Art Gallery of South Australia until 30^thMarch) looks at one of the most quietly unsung of artforms that has been central to the visual identity of protest movements, from William Morris in the nineteenth century, and Sonia Delauney in the twentieth and beyond. This exhibition is a patchwork of more than 100 artists, designers and activists drawn from Art Gallery of South Australia’s expansive collections of international, Australian and First Nations collections to knit together a history of textiles across 150 years.

 

The meaning of family is behind Shared Skin (Adelaide Contemporary Experimental, 15^thFebruary-12^thApril), a group show of contemporary artists from a variety of cultures and backgrounds depicting family in myriad ways. Twelve artists from different countries and continents look at how family is defined by way of umbilical links to class, sexuality, culture and community across a global village.

 

The Taken Path (The Wall Gallery, 12^thFebruary-16^thMarch)takes an even more forensic approach, as artists Catherine Truman and Ian Gibbins embark on a Sisyphean experiment in repetition in a  moving image work based on the duo taking the same walk once a month over a year. The walks took place through the Carrick Hill estate in the foothills of Adelaide. And has created an ever-changing document of changing seasons and landscapes to create what becomes a kind of psychogeographic durational meditation.

 

Also keeping a straight and clear path is Direct, Directed, Directly (Samstag Museum of Art, 28^thFebruary-30^thMay), a group show that utilises performance, moving image, installation and sound in an attempt to map out an international language of communication that goes beyond words and borders. 

 

Performance in its purest form can be seen in After Images - 60 Years of Australian Dance Theatre (Festival Theatre Galleries, (7^thFebruary-24^thMarch).This archival exhibition features photographs, films, costumes and other ephemera drawn from rarely seen private collections as well as those in the public domain, this is a crucial insight into one company’s evolution, from its first baby steps to becoming an international institution.

 

Visual art highlights of Adelaide Fringe include the Red Poles Indigenous Fringe Festival (14^thFebruary-22^ndMarch), a mini festival within the Fringe that shows off work across all art forms. Weathered by Susan Bruce (Sauerbier House Culture Exchange, 14^thFebruary-22^ndMarch) features a series of paintings of solitary figures in industrial urban landscapes, while Female Politicians of Adelaide, (Ground Floor Space at The Lost Dice, 8^th-24^thMarch) highlights a short history of the area’s female politicians in sketches and paintings.

 

A major show is Sovereign Acts / Love Praxis (FUMA Gallery at Flinders University Museum of Art, 17^thFebruary-21^stMarch) in which the Unbound Collective celebrate a decade of radical thinking, making and doing in a major cross-artform show that looks at rethinking sovereignty and representation through First Nations perspectives and methodologies. There is much more to see across the Fringe’s other fifty-eight events.

 

Radical Textiles, Art Gallery of South Australia until 30^thMarch. 

Shared Skin, Adelaide Contemporary Experimental, 15^thFebruary-12^thApril. 

The Taken Path, The Wall Gallery, 12^thFebruary-16^thMarch. 

Direct, Directed, Directly, Samstag Museum of Art, 28^thFebruary-30^thMay.

After Images - 60 Years of Australian Dance Theatre, Festival Theatre Galleries, 7^thFebruary-24^thMarch. 

 

Red Poles Indigenous Fringe Festival (14^thFebruary-22^ndMarch).

Weathered by Susan Bruce (Sauerbier House Culture Exchange, 14^thFebruary-22^ndMarch).

Female Politicians of Adelaide, Ground Floor Space at The Lost Dice, 8^th-24^thMarch.

Sovereign Acts / Love Praxis (FUMA Gallery at Flinders University Museum of Art, 17^thFebruary-21^stMarch).

The List Adelaide Festivals Guide 2025, February 2025

 

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